Surprisingly, Snoop Dogg did not come in last place. (Zynga.com)

And in a shocking upset, Edward Norton beat out Kristen Bell, Sophia Bush, Jonah Hill and Eva Longoria in Zynga's first-ever celebrity competition of Words with Friends, a game that we had all previously assumed Alec Baldwin was the hands-down champion of. As it turned out, Mr. Baldwin didn't even enter the ring, basically throwing the fight to the Fight Club actor, who won $132,500 for his charity, Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust.

Mr. Norton did give a shout-out to the WWF master in his acceptance speech:

I'm happy to have won because it will have a huge impact for the work on Maasai Wilderness, which is an effort I'm very involved with and passionate about. This was a lot easier and more fun than asking friends to write checks to support our effort, so I'm grateful to Zynga for their generosity and for turning games into real impact and positive contribution. Next year I want Alec Baldwin in the roster. I want to beat the best. Anybody who would get thrown off a flight for refusing to stop playing WWF is somebody I need to play.

Of course, no man is an island, and Mr. Norton and the other contestants were helped out by players at home, among whom a winner will be announced today. Here are the final standings:

1. First Place – $132,500

Edward Norton, Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust

2. Second Place – $57,500

Sophia Bush, Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust

3. Third Place – $20,000

Kristen Bell, Harlem Grown

4. Fourth Place – $20,000

Eva Longoria, The Eva Longoria Foundation

5. Fifth Place – $5,000

John Legend, The Show Me Campaign

6. Sixth Place – $5,000

Snoop Lion, The Snoop Youth Football League

7. Seventh Place – $5,000

Jonah Hill, Harlem Grown

8. Eighth Place – $5,000

Paul Pierce, Truth On Health – The Truth Fund

We kind of love that there are two people below Snoop Dogg on this list. Either he must have phoned a friend, or Jonah Hill is illiterate.

Here's CBS's description of the new 2.0 show:
DRAW SOMETHING is a dynamic, interactive game show where two teams consisting of one celebrity and one fan of the Draw Something app test their creativity and compete by drawing and guessing words to earn cash!

DRAW SOMETHING is being produced for CBS by Embassy Row, Ryan Seacrest Productions, and Sony Pictures Television.

The show is based on the most exciting and addictive mobile game ever created by Zynga and is sure to be a hit!

Woof, no mention that Zynga (the group behind Farmville) merely acquired Draw Something when it bought Omgpop? Or that since the buyout, Draw Something's fan base has dropped so significantly that analysts have called the deal a "dud"? Well, at least Ryan Seacrest is involved.

The homepage brings you to an application form, where you can upload a photo of yourself as well as your best smartphone rendition of Starry Night. The show also asks for your relationship status, leaving us to wonder if CBS also has a marketing tie-in with Grindr or How About We. Actually, that's a show we'd definitely watch. Well, if it was available on Hulu or something.

Simple Sandy: Former Citigroup chairman and CEO Sandy Weill went on CNBC yesterday and said we'd all be better off if banks split off their investment banking units. That was a little like Joe Camel swearing off cigarettes, a friend quipped, for Mr. Weill was the driving force behind the creation of the "supermarket" banking model in the 1980s and 1990s. But the banking boss has been simplifying his entire life lately, selling off his penthouse at 15 Central Park West last year, and spending more time in California. "I think that simpler is better. But my life is still not very simple," Mr. Weill told CNBC's Robert Frank.

Drab banking: "There's no sexiness, there's no fun, there's no intellectual intrigue" in banking these days, a former Credit Suisse and Bear Stearns trader tells Bloomberg.

Geithner didn't know...About the "specific conversation" in which a Barclays employ told the Federal Reserve Bank of New York that the British lender wasn't posting an honest Libor rate as early as 2008. Mr. Geithner, who headed the New York Fed at the time and is now Treasury secretary, told the House Financial Services Committee yesterday that he thought the FRBNY took appropriate action by sharing its Libor-related concerns with U.S. and U.K. regulators.

New odds on Grexit: Citigroup economists hung a 90 percent chance on Greece leaving the euro in the next 12 to 18 months.

Pain in Spain: Banco Santander, Spain's largest lender, said profit fell 93 percent in the second quarter as the bank set aside more cash to offset soured loans.

Libor-ated: Employees at Lloyds Banking Group have received subpoenas as parts of investigations by regulators across the globe into the manipulation of Libor and other interbank lending rates, the company said yesterday in announcing second-quarter earnings. Until those investigations have run their course, the bank doesn't see a need to set aside funds to settle civil lawsuits arising from the matter, executive George Culmer told investors on a conference call.

Look out below: Zynga plummeted 37 percent in trading after the close of New York markets yesterday, as the firm announced disappointing second-quarter results. Key Zynga partner Facebook announces earnings today.

Tax hole: The official in charge of multinational effort to tax offshore accounts questioned a report released last week that rich individuals are hiding as much as $32 trillion. "I was wondering where the equivalent of 450 Bill Gates are hiding from everyone," OECD official Pascal Saint-Armans told Reuters.

The potential $250 million investment makes Zynga the latest entry on a growing list of big online companies with rapidly expanding valuations. Groupon, Facebook and Twitter are all commanding multibillion-dollar prices. Zynga distinguishes itself from some other firms in the hot consumer-facing online space by being profitable to the tune of $400 million last year, according to The Journal.

And then there's this little nugget: "Zynga is in conversations with at least one major bank about raising financing, as well as mutual funds and others, according to people familiar with the matter." Meanwhile, JPMorgan is scraping together a $500 -$750 million fund to invest in technology companies.

In any case, the frenzy for nonpublic Internet companies with massive audiences continues.

mtaylor [at] observer.com | @mbrookstaylor

Game developer Area Code announced today that they will be known as Zynga New York. 

There are no details at the moment on what Zynga paid to acquire Area Code or if this was more of a strategic merger. 

Whatever the case, its a significant development for the Silicon Alley ecosystem, putting our top talent to work on the world's biggest social games. 

bpopper at observer dot com - @benpopper

Cash-rich local startup GroupMe has decided it's time to plaster stickers everywhere.

Remember the sticker-centric publicity stunt by Facebook game-maker Zynga in August? (See Farmville Makers Inspire Lower East Side Vendetta.) Zynga stickered sidewalks with fake cash and windows with fake bullet holes to promote the game Mafia Wars, pissing off bloggers who called it "littering."

Now GroupMe, a New York startup that has developed a way to save lists for group text messaging from any phone, looks to be doing something similar.

GroupMe raised $9 million last month from Betaworks, Lerer Ventures and First Round Capital, among others. The company has apparently used some of that money for "thousands of stickers:"

Keep an eye out for them in the wild-you never know where they're going to pop up.

If you want a few to help us spread the word, we'd love to send you some.

Ominous. If you're interested in making some city maintenance workers' lives harder, instructions for getting free stickers are on GroupMe's blog.

UPDATE: Steve Spillman, community manager at GroupMe, writes in to clarify that GroupMe has nothing but love for city maintenance workers and "currently has no plans to vandalize anything... what I meant is that people are putting them on their phones and computers and notebooks and laptop bags--not on stop signs, god forbid."

ajeffries [at] observer.com | @adrjeffries

Today, The Journal reports that popular third party Facebook apps like Zynga's Farmville, Texas Hold-Em and Frontierville were transmitting personal information to advertising firms. According to the story, "The practice breaks Facebook's rules, and renews questions about its ability to keep identifiable information about its users' activities secure."

Facebook certainly should police the activity of its third-party apps, but this story, like many others in the "What They Know" series, borders on yellow journalism. One of the main "scoops" in the story is that these apps are sending users' Facebook IDs to advertisers. These IDs can be used to find out people's real names.

Guess what, everyone's real name, more often than not complete with their gender and location, is accessible on Facebook through search engines like Google and Bing. As The Journal puts it,

Since a Facebook user ID is a public part of any Facebook profile, anyone can use an ID number to look up a person's name, using a standard Web browser, even if that person has set all of his or her Facebook information to be private. For other users, the Facebook ID reveals information they have set to share with "everyone," including age, residence, occupation and photos.

Breaking news. Things you set to share with "everyone" are now available to "EVERYONE," including advertisers.

bpopper [at] observer.com

@benpopper